Yurts, Tipis, Tents and All the Cool People: SXSW, How It’s Made, Coachella and Hollywood.

We have always garnered some interest from the press and entertainment industries. But, for a small, family-owned company in a fairly remote part of western Colorado, these past few months have been a whirlwind of attention.

Last fall, we had a very exciting few days when Discovery Channel’s show “How it’s Made” came to our shop to film. They did two separate segments: one about Colorado Yurts, the other about Earthworks Tipis. It was a great time for us to show how our skilled crew of craftsmen and women put together our exceptional quality products. It’s a hands-on process, with lots of detail work, and we hope it shows in the programs set to air in the fall of 2012. We’ll keep you informed, so you can set your DVR! You can see we (and the How It’s Made crew) had a lot of fun in these pretty rough ‘behind the scenes’ videos .

Then, we had a small part in a very well-hyped movie. The recent David Wain directed comedy “Wanderlust” featured our tipis and yurts. We took the structures to the film set in Georgia nearly 18 months ago, and set them up for filming. It was billed as a big deal movie, starring Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd, and some reviewers actually said it was hilarious. And then we saw the movie.

While our movie career was somewhat disappointing, we thought perhaps a stint in the music industry might be better. Cliff, Doug and Peter made their way south and west to Austin’s world-renowned South by Southwest music festival to set up yurts. It was a great and interesting time–mostly because the team had to set up the yurts in a torrential, 3-day rain storm. As an Austin old timer told our rain-soaked team, “Y’all are welcome anytime–it hasn’t rained in 18 months.”

Our pop culture tour continues with The Coachella Music Festival in Indio, CA. We’ve handcrafted 200 tents and 100 tipis for the 275,000 attendee-strong music festival that will feature Radiohead, the Black Keys and Snoop Dog and more than 100 bands we’ve never heard of (so they must be popular!).

There is another “still secret” project we recently completed. We can only say… it’s a popular television show and they used our yurts in a very exciting and unique way… Watch facebook and our blog for more about this in the summer.

We’re happy that yurts, tipis and tents are so interesting, and we are able to show off a bit with these projects. We’re so proud of the unique structures we make and the love we put into them. We continue to craft each one by hand in our shop, and send them to the customer with pride. Whether it’s a big Hollywood movie or a family who needs a tent for the summer, we take the same care with each order.